New MIT device measures walking speed with high accuracy

         

A prototype wireless device developed by scientists at MIT can help people monitor their walking speed. The device is called WiGait, and scientists expect that by monitoring people’s walking speed, it will become a better predictor of health issues such as cognitive decline, falls, and some cardiac or pulmonary diseases.

The researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) noticed that although blood pressure, breathing, pulse and body temperature provide insight into an individual’s health, new studies pointed that walking speed was also a major vital sign to take into consideration.

A prototype wireless device developed by scientists at MIT can help people monitor their walking speed. Image credit: Healthy Life & Beauty

They stumbled across a common problem: it’s next to impossible to accurately monitor people’s walking speed in a way that’s both unobtrusive and continuous. The team, led by Professor Dina Katabi, designed a device that would solve the problem, as it is wireless.

MIT’s newest device can measure walking speed with 95 to 99 percent accuracy

In a new paper, the team presented the WiGait, a wireless device that can measure the walking speed of several people with 95 to 99 percent accuracy using wireless signals. The WiGait is the size of a small painting, and it can be placed on the wall of a person’s house. The device’s signals emit one-hundredth the amount of radiation of a typical cell phone.

The WiGait uses technology previously developed for Katabi’s WiTrack device, which analyzes wireless signals reflected off people’s bodies to measure a range of behaviors such as breathing, falling and specific emotions.

“By using in-home sensors, we can see trends in how walking speed changes over longer periods of time,” said lead author and PhD student Chen-Yu Hsu, according to MIT. “This can provide insight into whether someone should adjust their health regime, whether that’s doing physical therapy or altering their medications.”

The device is also 85 to 99 percent accurate at measuring an individual’s stride length, and the team believes it could allow researchers to comprehend better conditions like Parkinson’s disease, which is characterized by reduced step size.

Katabi and Hsu developed the WiGait device along with CSAIL Ph.D. student Zachary Kabelac and master’s student Rumen Hristov. Researchers from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Boston University School of Science also co-authored the study, which will be presented in May at ACM’s CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Colorado.